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11.6.05

Yep, 1981 was the year of the Tweets, who brought us the Birdie Song with its accompanying dance - and we were all at it...Benny really set the Crossroads Motel Christmas party aflame when he did it...

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INTRODUCTION

The '80s Actual blog is designed to be an antidote to all those television shows and on-line articles of recent years which examine pop culture - and frequently get it hopelessly wrong! If you sat watching the BBC's "I Love The 1970s" and exclaimed over items being shown "I could swear that was 1968!" or "Wasn't that 1981?" chances are you were right.

If you look at certain '70s fan sites and think a lot of the material written about is actually from the '80s, you are almost certainly correct.

If on-line encyclopedia articles which state that pop culture of 1983 is really 1977, or similar, have you wishing for reality, then '80s Actual is for you.

There is a huge drive in the media and on-line to negate the 1980s, to attribute that decade's innovations and fond memories to other decades, and basically to present it as a completely vapid ten years, not worthy of examination.

I'm not sure why. Perhaps it's just comforting to have a decade people can scapegoat and declare "HORRIBLE"?

This blog is based on actual memories, media footage (thank you, YouTube!) and snippets of newspaper and magazine articles from the 1980s. If you read it here, I think you can rest assured it's accurate, though I can take no responsibility for the newspaper reports from the decade!The '80s Actual blog examines the decade's news stories - from the emergence of Lady Diana Spencer into the public eye in 1980, to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

Was it simply "The Greed Decade" as many like to claim? I think not - the '80s saw the emergence of yuppies, but also Red Wedge, the Greenham Common Peace Women, and increasing concern for the environment. It may be convenient to scapegoat the '80s as the cause of all known ills, but the reality of the decade was far different - absolute bedlam, as Right fought Left, idealism fought corporate ambition. The election ofRonald Reagan as American President in 1980, and his second victory in 1984, had a far more decisive effect on the international political landscape than the three successive general election victories of UK Prime MinisterMargaretThatcher in 1979, 1983 and 1987.

Musically, the 1980s saw the beginnings of House Music, the exciting and still evolving world of synths taking centre stage, the evolvement of Rap music into the fully-fledged Hip Hop scene, Band Aid and Live Aid, great Indie, startling Acid House, and Raves...

And there was so much more! The decade truly had something for everyone - and provided a welcome escape for a while from the long-running and boring saga of flared trousers as fashion, begun back in the 1960s!

There are also also '80s Actual sister blogs taking us back to the '70s and '60s - The Real 1970s and Spacehopper.The view of the 1980s presented here is from an English perspective - much of the original '80s material used is from England, but I hope this blog will prove useful and enjoyable to people in the other nations of the UK and much further afield.